The man who had so inexorably accomplished this last act of unfaltering justice waited for a moment or two until the last lingering echo of the double pistol shot had ceased to resound through the woods. Then he put two fingers to his lips and gave a shrill prolonged whistle; after which he came out from behind the willow. He was small and insignificant-looking, with a pale face and colourless eyes. He was dressed in grey and a grey cap was pulled low down over his forehead. He went up to where the two miscreants whom he had shot were lying, and with a practised eye and hand assured himself that they were indeed dead. He turned the light of the dark lantern first on the man with the queer-shaped lip and then on the latter's companion. The two Chouans had at any rate paid for some of their crimes with their lives; it remained for the Almighty Judge to pardon or to punish as they deserved. The third man lay, stark and rigid, where a kick from the other man had roughly cast him aside. His eyes, wide open and inscrutable, had still around them a strange look of authority and pride; the features appeared calm and marble-like; the mouth under the obviously false beard was tightly closed, as if it strove even in death to suppress every sound which might betray the secret that had been so jealously guarded throughout life. Near by lay the wooden stump which had thrown such a cloud of dust into the eyes of good M. Lefèvre and his local police.
With slow deliberation the Man in Grey picked up the wooden stump, and so replaced it against the dead man's leg that in the feeble light and dense black shadows it looked as real as it had done in life—a support for an amputated limb. A moment or two later, the flickering light of a lantern showed through the thicket, and soon the lusty voice of the commissary of police broke in on the watcher's loneliness.
"We heard three distinct shots," explained M. Lefèvre, as soon as he reached the clearing and caught sight of the secret agent.
"Three acts of justice," replied the Man in Grey quietly, as he pointed to the bodies of the three Chouans.
"The man with the wooden leg!" exclaimed the commissary in tones wherein astonishment and unmistakable elation struggled with a momentary feeling of horror. "You have got him?"
"Yes," answered the Man in Grey simply. "Where are your men?"
"I left them at the junction of the bridle-path, as you ordered me to do," growled the commissary sullenly, for he still felt sore and aggrieved at the peremptory commands which had been given to him by the secret agent earlier on that day.
"Then go back and send half a dozen of them here with improvised stretchers to remove the bodies."
"Then it was you, who——" murmured Lefèvre, not knowing, indeed, what to say or do in the face of this puzzling and grim emergency.
"What else would you have had me do?" rejoined the Man in Grey, as, with a steady hand, he removed the false hair and beard which disguised the pale, aristocratic face of M. de Saint-Tropèze.